


Don't Want No Dead-End Job

by PyrrhaIphis



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Gen, Mid-Canon, Pre-Canon, Vignette, Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 11:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21391435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: Just three short vignettes looking at our male leads* in the years before they arrived at the job in which we came to know and love them.  Each one gets his own chapter, naturally.Inspired by the Police song whose title I borrowed for this fic. ;)*I didn't do one for Mandy because it was the late '60s, and societal expectations regarding women working were so different then.  And also because her "job" is somewhat nebulous.  (Wife of a rock star is not really a job, y'know?)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. Birmingham, 1968

**Author's Note:**

> As always, please let me know if I used any inappropriate Americanisms in the POV of a British character.

“Just _what_ was so wrong with that job, Tommy?”

“Everything.” A dull workday in a dull office doing dull things surrounded by dull people. How was he supposed to accept a life like that? An ordinary wage slave…that wasn’t the life he wanted. That wasn’t what life had promised him.

“You _need_ a job, Thomas! You can’t spend the rest of your life living here—a boy is supposed to move out and make his own way!”

“I’m not a boy anymore, Mum.”

“No, you’re not, and that’s the entire point! We paid for your university, so the least you could do in return is get a job and support yourself like a decent citizen!”

Doing his best to restrain the sarcastic comments that were begging to escape his lips, Brian headed out the door of the house, waving his hand at his mother as he went. Let her think it was him accepting her words, or dismissing them, or saying his farewells for the morning. He wouldn’t care what she thought in the slightest, if it weren’t that he was still technically dependent on his parents for his livelihood.

That had to change, of course it did.

But Brian Slade was not going to accept some pathetic, conventional livelihood. That may have been the life that Thomas Slade was born into, but he wasn’t that person anymore. He had always abhorred the name, and all his mates at uni had agreed he was no Tommy: he was a Brian.

And soon, he’d be the ultimate Brian. The quintessential. The one and only.

He just had to find the right opening, the right opportunity.

And he’d never find that if he was trapped in an office in a Birmingham high rise.


	2. New York City, 1966

The landlord stared at Curt through narrowed eyes. “How are you planning on paying your rent?” he asked.

Curt grimaced. “I don’t know yet. I’ll get the money somewhere.” If nothing else, there were always horny older men around who were willing to cough up dough to get their hands on young ass. Not exactly the way Curt wanted to make his living, but it’d do in a pinch.

“I can’t afford to lease rooms to someone with no job.”

“How’m I supposed to get a job if I’ve got no place to live?” Curt countered.

The landlord sighed. “Normally, a man gets a job _before_ moving out of his parents’ house.”

“My parents don’t have a house. They have a fucking trailer. In Detroit.” Curt shook his head. “Can’t apply to a job in New York from Detroit.”

“That’s not really my problem.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, kid, but I can’t let you move in here unless you have a job. You must have friends or family you can stay with until you line up some work.” The landlord picked up a brochure off a stack on the table beside him. “Here, this is an employment agency. They’ll help you find work faster.”

Curt took the flier, but pitched it as soon as he was back out on the street. What was an employment agency gonna do for him? First thing they’d ask about was where he was living, and what was he gonna say about that? Worse, what if they asked him about where he’d been living and what he’d been doing since he cut ties with his family? No one would do jack shit for him if they found out he’d spent the last three years being kept by a middle-aged man who liked to fuck him and get high while listening to Curt play guitar.

Not knowing what else to do, he headed back to the train station and retrieved his stuff from the coin locker. Then he headed down into the subways and found his way onto the train that would take him where he needed to go. Curt had heard rumors about clubs in New York where bands just getting started could play and get their act put together before they tried—and usually failed—to make the big time. Surely one of those bands needed another guitarist.

It wasn’t ideal, but he had to do something. And there wasn’t much else he _could_ do. If he’d wanted to work in a factory, he’d have stayed in Detroit and gone to work in one of the ones there, making cars like all the other stiffs. And he wasn’t really qualified for much else, not unless he went back and finished high school. But what was the point of that? Curt had learned enough on the streets to know what he needed to. And he’d read more books in the last three years than he’d have ever been expected to read in school.

No, if he followed the normal rules, Curt would end up a factory hand or a janitor. He’d rather die. He knew where _those_ jobs led: he’d been born there. If that was all life had to offer him, he’d be better off dead. So if he couldn’t make a living playing guitar…well, he’d either have to make a living as a whore, or he could kill himself with drugs. Better than ending up back in the trailer park. Anything was better than turning into his old man.


	3. London, 1976

For the third time, Arthur added up the numbers on the paper in front of him. Just like the last two times, he didn’t like the results. Between tuition and rent, the money he had saved up wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. He had hoped that answering that advert and sharing a flat would help by reducing the rent expenses, but that had been hopelessly naïve of him. Story of his life, that.

“Having trouble with your maths homework?” his new flatmate asked, with a ragged grin. Dan seemed to be a bog standard Londoner in most respects: listened to ordinary music, only dated girls, often had a pint of an afternoon but rarely did any drugs, dressed just like everyone else…he was so completely generic that he could have been anyone. Quite the depressing come-down after living with the Flaming Creatures.

“I wish that’s what it was,” Arthur sighed. “It’s my finances I’m ‘aving trouble with.”

“Can’t help you there. If I had more money, I wouldn’t have needed to take you in as a lodger.”

Arthur resisted the urge to correct him that he would only be a lodger if Dan actually owned the flat. If he wrecked things now, he’d be in an even worse spot than he already was. “Doesn’t help that tuition is higher than I thought it’d be,” he said instead. He’d been counting on getting a scholarship, but it had fallen through when the university contacted his old school in Manchester and found out he hadn’t been such a good student as his test scores suggested. As if it was Arthur’s fault that classes were boring? It was never that he couldn’t or didn’t learn the material, he’d just had other things to think about than whatever the professors were droning on about. All the other students had been the same way, but _they_ hadn’t run off to London in their final year, so they’d gotten glowing reports and Arthur’s reports made him out to be a leper.

“You could always try selling your arse,” Dan laughed. “I hear some fruits are so desperate that they pay a lot of money to ruin boys like you.”

“It’s about the only thing I ‘ave that _is_ worth any money,” Arthur grumbled. Not that selling it was an option in the least. For one thing, he had no desire to be arrested. And more importantly, he knew the places a young man went to sell himself, and he was already too well known in those places as willing to give himself away for free; who’d pay for what had always been free?

“What are you going to do, then?” Dan asked. “I won’t be able to make this month’s rent if you don’t contribute your share.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll pay up.” Arthur sighed, and looked at the numbers again. “I’ll sell everything I’ve got left of any value…” That was pretty much only his record player and records, as he’d already sold off all his glam gear. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t bring in nearly enough. “And then I guess I’ll go and get a job in the shops like every other student at uni.” What else could he do?

“There’s a jobs listing down the corner,” Dan told him. “Might help.”

“Ta.”

Arthur packed his record collection into a cloth bag and bundled the player under his arm, then headed out of the flat. The music store sold second-hand goods, and would hopefully give him more for his things than the pawn shop would. Though the look on the clerk’s face was not promising as he set down the player on the counter.

“Old and cheap,” the clerk informed him. “Can’t give you much for it.”

“I need all I can get,” Arthur assured him. “Unless the pawn dealer will give me more for it, I’ll take it.”

“No, you’ll get the better deal here. Let’s see your records, then.”

Arthur withdrew them from the bag and set them on the counter beside the player. As he watched the clerk look through the stack, Arthur could feel something inside him die a little with each record that passed through the other man’s hands. A crack formed on his heart as “Danger Zone” passed out of his possession. That was the last photo of Curt Wild that Arthur owned. But maybe that was for the best. It wasn’t as though he’d ever meet the man again, true, but no photo could ever capture the _real_ Curt Wild. So what was the point in holding on to one?

“Well, this is a surprise! I thought they’d all been burned.” The clerk smiled down at Arthur’s copy of “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon,” the record that had precipitated Arthur’s departure from his parents’ suburban lives. “I can give you a good price for this,” he said with a large smile for Arthur. “They’ve become quite valuable since the fans calmed down enough to regret taking their anger out on the music.”

Arthur nodded. Another piece of his life surgically detached.

It was for the best, he kept telling himself. He needed to be able to support himself. He needed to be able to live his life, and he couldn’t do that while burdened down with dreams and fantasies.

He’d get a job at a bookshop or a grocer’s, and he’d get his university degree (in something or other), and then he’d get a better job (of what sort he couldn’t begin to guess) and if he needed sexual companionship he could sneak off to a gay bar when the new people in his life weren’t looking. That was what everyone else did. Why would his life be any different?


End file.
